Dear Tom: A Ghostly Correspondence
by PallaPlease
Summary: Four years after Voldemort's true and final death, Ginny is still haunted by the memory - or the spectre - of Tom Riddle.  To purge him from her, she writes letters - and discovers something she had long dismissed.  [Updated.]
1. An Inquiry

Dear Tom: An Inquiry

(in form of a poem)

-

Dear Tom,

I wish I were dead and gone

like a summer's glimpse of noontime breeze, as fleeting

in memory as the taste of snow when 'round 

comes June.

I grow so tired somedays, trying to finish the papers –

thick, white, neverending, I'm only twenty, how can this all be 

my work, my burden, my responsibility?  My quill feels 

heavy those days and my fingers numb, knuckles too stiff  

to bend around it, and even as I worry if Da

will be upset that I can't finish it all on time, I remember you, 

Tom.

I thought you looked like Harry – I know you hate 

him, Tom, detest him, loathe him, but

I still love him, please understand – when I was younger,

thinking maybe when he was seventeen he might

look like you.  But he grew wiry, tall and

elegant where you were tall and lethal, dark with

softness where you are dark with threat.

You don't exist anymore, can't you just leave me

alone?  I don't want you seeping in me, driving my quill from

my numbing grip as this ghostly

memory of you croons deadly love in my ears, lean fingers

picking at the coarseness of my red hair, touching

and stroking my nape as you frighten me – you

never face me, why am I so scared of remembering your face – 

murmuring and comforting old pains before you let

your soul flow into my essence.

Am I mad, Tom, to recall you and think it is your fault when my 

tired nerves pluck my bones into a gradual stiffness?  

You would think me crazy, wouldn't you, to know of the

strange quiver in my chest when I think of your

strong fingertips – Harry's are slender, so different from

yours – violating the sanctity of my rented room,

probing callously against the skin of my neck, ruddy to match my damned

fiery hair.

It does not do to think of great evils, remembering the

deep shades of their eyes or the pleasant curve of the squared 

chin; you are Voldemort, one I hate and fear, fear most of all, but, oh

Tom, you are dead now, you are gone.  I can

think of you now without fear you will know, slaying

my family in our tidy, worn beds.  But I wonder, Tom, if it is safe, even

now, to feel a curious tightening in my heart at the thought of

you, swallowed in evil or not.

You were to kill me, Tom, without a glance back at the silly 

heartbroken first-year who trusted you

so implicitly.  I told you everything I felt or thought, my

fears and loves and half-known child desires.  You knew of my 

confusion over Harry – oh, but, Tom, I didn't mean for you to

act so jealous, I never thought to hurt you, I 

didn't even know you were my bane and torture, all I

loathed and cried in fright of – and all my longing for him.

You were told of my first cyclic bleeding and even

if I think it a foolish thing now, simple and

so very idiotic, I was, I am, thankful that you laughed

and instructed me on a potion to ease the sudden crippling agony.  

I felt a fool when you chided my fright at it, but you relaxed my terror.

You could have killed me then, added something I

would have mixed in with no thought otherwise and taken, ridding

yourself of the pest that was – 

that is – Virginia Weasley.  I was needed, though, 

to serve as your final piece in that elaborate puzzle, 

but I don't think you ever knew how hard it was to hurl 

your diary – my diary – our diary

in poor Moaning Myrtle's loo and leave it, 

running as I felt a peculiar tearing deep inside.

Tom, did you take a piece of my soul when I turned and fled?

Do you hold that missing jagged piece still, laughing

at me though Harry – don't be mad, Tom – killed you, finished you

so many years ago?  And those nights after I threw you away, 

I dreamt an uneasy trickle of random images, sensations, 

thoughts, until in my mind I saw you catch my face in pinning

fingers, a dangerous grin on your own handsome face.

"Thank you kindly, Ginny," you whispered in a double-edged voice,

and I stared, horrified and mesmerized by this ethereal stranger of seven-and-ten

years, once, and you kissed me – too rough a kiss for an eleven-year 

old girl, but I surely dreamt it and nothing more.  

"You've given me into his hands."

I want that piece of my soul back, Tom; I want sanity and 

freedom from guilt; I want to have never let you steal my heart as you

wove to kill Harry; I want to see your face and keep you 

from haunting me.

Leave me alone, Tom.  You never loved me – did you, Tom, or were you 

just so hateful that dear Harry had a girl's affections so

soon, too – and I cannot bear your bitterness if you did not love me.  

In spite of the quiet, sombering knowledge that you are dead, 

please take care to write back soon.  I will wait for you,

in my pleasant room that I rent on 4 Foresby Lane, 

with my quill in hand, but Tom: 

please don't make me love you.

Sincerely,

Ginny.


	2. A Plea

Dear Tom: A Plea

(in form of a poem)

-

Dear Tom, 

I couldn't sleep after I wrote my last

mad-scripted letter, curling in my thin bed

and hugging myself as I huddled.  It was so

silly of me, even entertaining the silent fear

you would somehow answer – you always

did, Tom, even those times I could sense

anger in your careful, charming words –

passing through death and filtering into

my life.

I remembered, crying for fear of you under 

the slim protection of my sheets, the feel of

blood on my fingers and when, finally, I

knew the blood was because of you.  It took

all my soul last night to keep from imagining what

could happen – would happen to me.  If you

were free to read and respond, piercing 

death in favor of tangible life, 

what could you then do to me?

You nearly killed me once and I knew, through

my insanity – have I gone insane, Tom? – and

with my terror, salt and tears and sweat, if

you could, you would kill me now.  You must

hate me for everything.  Being a fool, being

weak.  Whining to you, boring the

darkness of your mind.  Loving Harry with all

that held me clasped together.

But I made it through the night,

sanity anchoring itself firmly in my being to

assist the morning dawn – warm, golden, and soft

as it brushed through the window over me – in

its saving chore.  Relief at knowing you are

still locked deep in death's embrace and I am safe 

from you, wrapped in gilded sheaths of life. 

I live while you cease.

Do you hate me for this, Tom?  Do you seethe 

in whatever hell you created, waiting and

biding the burning, the humiliation, and the eternity 

granted you in justice's name for those

dead by your hands?  Do you think on me with

disgust and hate for daring, even once, to

defy your horrible power?  Yet I still live.

I hate you, Tom!  I want you

to know I will never let my walls fade long enough,

far enough, for me to ever think of you as friend,

confidante, enigmatic pen-pal, and most certainly,

with all my revulsion and hatred, I don't want that

ghostly trace of you coming to me at

night when I work.

I do not allow you the right to seduce me, no

matter how I once cared, no matter how your spectral

fingers tease at my hair or your handsome

choir-boy's voice speaks gently,

charmingly, lovingly to me.  I cannot let in the 

shard of your soul that replaced my own ragged, twisted

piece, must not acknowledge part

of you remains in me: you beat in my heart,

pulse in liquid warmth with the flow of my tidal blood,

render me voiceless when I see Harry.

I scrounge together the unwinding threads of my

courage and hurriedly weave them into a scrap

of cloth to preserve my bravery and intentions, bearing

it as I move to draw his attention.  I think, 

maybe, if only those green eyes would fall on me and

still, trembling with surprise to see how – but I never

get that far.  I see brown eyes in my mind, 

powerful and condescending, red flickers in the centre

that grow in malevolence when your voice

grows enchanting.

You used me and ruined me, Tom,

reshaped the part of me that trusts and loves so I

can't give as freely as I should.  I'm a Weasley!

I'm supposed to love and spread my heart

thin with affection and joy, not spy shadows in moments of 

brilliant light where shadows are not meant to exist.

I want to tell Harry I love him – I do, don't I, 

I always have, Tom, it isn't something I can control –

but that sliver of me that is you screams for me 

to step back, close my eyes, stay away from him.

Even in death you have to control at least one

person, don't you, no matter if it is a small woman of

twenty years with freckles and 

strawberry hair that frizzes when storms break.  You

won't let me love him, Tom, and I hate you for

that, so much it hurts my soul sometimes.

And when I stumble out of the room, tears

stinging my face and shame at my failing strength

spearing my heart, it isn't Harry who follows

to comfort.  Is that why you stuck that insidious

piece in my soul?  To sabotage my emotions and soothe 

me in the frail moments with the dark, ghostly

magic that brings you to play with me cruelly when you wish?

I can't be alone because of you, I can 

never truly be alone; you fill me, reminding me of what I

think – oh God I hope I'm just mad or daft or insane and

that you never had that power – is the resurrecting tendril left 

this time.  Death did not come easily to you, and you've 

come back from hell's threshold one – two – 

over and again.

Don't use me anymore.  If you did quilt your soul to

mine, I can't let you use me to flow once more 

from death to life.  I can't let you kill Harry!

And now sunlight is fading to twilight, shafts

of gold into shafts of violent.  My fingers

are going numb again, and my knuckles are tightening.

Are you here, Tom?  Are you reading what I'm scripting as

you dredge out of my soul?  I can feel a fingertip under my ear,

a careful touch of chilled spectre flesh to molten human's, 

as if – maybe – you are draining a little of my soul each

time, as once you did.  Where do you come from, why 

don't you come every night, does simply coming 

to touch the living tire you?

Go away.  Go back to your

hell and stop tormenting me.  I'm still living, and I'm

afraid if I should die – my hands, your hands, 

God's, whoever finds the time right – I will be

trapped in death with you.

The sun is going and I'll be alone in moment, alone

but frozen in fear and old caring with this darkness of you.  Tom,

I'm scared.

Ginny.

-

-

Many thanks to MysticSorceror, Diamond Absinthe, and SibilantSybil.  Very appreciated, all.  ^^


	3. Of Dawn and Twilight

Dear Tom: Of Dawn and Twilight

(still in form of a poem)

--

Dear Tom,

Each time the sun rises anew I feel

relief and happiness – sweet

as chocolate and thick as cream – swamp 

over my tired eyes and my limp body.  Dawn

saves me from the quiet tremoring evils

hiding in the night, slights of shining fire

plucking my soul to safety.

I wake in the morning, content with stillness

as the rising sun remakes me, and after a few

moments of simply lazing I stretch 

out my fingers and toes, feeling oddly,

happily, as a well-fed cat might.  I have

always loved the morning, from the dawn of my

fourth Christmas to the sun-break of today; 

there is a simple, extravagant beauty in the

glowing painted shades of fire that emerge, as

though to say the world, too, is a phoenix

like kind Fawkes.  "And from the ashes

it rises in glory."

Twilight and the high exultation of stars – I'm

not a night person.  It's too easy for things of

shadows to sneak upon me, demons, snakes, monster – 

and men.

I know you hate – hated – it when I whine,

but I'm not trying to.  I hate you, yes, but I don't

want to make you feel – how do I know

what I don't want?  Or in these morning hours of

confident bewilderment, what I do want?

I want you to hear what my mornings were like

before I knew you, when I still had the promise

of freedom from fear, what the seconds

of my life were when I had you to confide and place

my trust in, and 

what it is like now.  If you aren't here at all or if you

have the tiniest smidge of your soul burned deep

into my core, I need to set this down, rid

it from my mind before it festers and bleeds slowly,

darkly to melt in my essence.  Listen to me,

please.

I'm the last of seven, pampered and ignored

as both the baby girl and an annoying youngest.

Weasleys aren't rich and if anything we were

poorer then, but what I never had in toys 

and dresses was more than made up for.

I don't think you'd understand, really, not with

your childhood being what it was, but 

when everyone loves you and you spend every

day amid that love,

it gives a light to every step you take.  (Is that why

you were so empty, Tom?  Is that loneliness,

that emptiness of love and touch, what bled

you into Lord Voldemort?)

Ron was my closest friend when we were small,

lanky and headstrong and willing to shove me in

the dirt those times I was a snort, though no

one else would.  We woke together and played

together until he was nine – do you remember

your ninth birthday?  Did you become to grown up for

the other kids? – and then I had Mum.  But it

was still quiet and gentle, the perfect homey place to 

coddle a little girl as she grew to be a little witch.

My first year at Hogwarts…I was more concerned

with Harry than other matters, feeling sure

I was desperately in love with him and determining

I would find someway, even if I had to enlist 

the help of a Slytherin – ironic, isn't it, Tom? – to 

win his affections.

And I found you, or you found me, and

I hadn't felt as happy in years, with the glory that

was having a secret all for myself and gaining

my closest friend – I would say bosom 

buddy, but I think you wouldn't like to be called

such.  Men can be so absurd at times.

I fell so easily down the slippery cliffs of your lies, 

trusting you and sharing in strictest

confidence all the things to strike my child-heart.

I don't know if anyone has ever said or writ

this to you, and I should hope you won't find

offense in it, but you could be a romantic, even

as a false one.  Not once before, nor once after, did

I see a Gothic romance in someone's penmanship. 

I was such a foolish girl to never recognize

the shallowness and the darkness behind the 

delicate script and fanciful words.

I would sit through my days, listening only in 

half-attentiveness in my classes, and night fall

replaced dawn as my favored time, as darkness –

cool, fragrant, black as an endless lake – fell and

the school day shaded away.  Curling on my

bed, flipping our diary open, I found

youthful giddiness with each word shared in exchange.

Thinking back on it, when I first began to

fear something was terribly wrong with me, I should

have wondered, if just once! if it was of your

device.  A Slytherin, perfect with words and so

very silver-tongued (oh you were so horribly charming),

a strange book that answered with thought of

its own, and a thousand tiny things that cried out

in breaking, glass voices: "deception!"  But

I was deaf to those voices, turning to the source of

my pain for help, pleading and crying and weeping.

You must have laughed.

I reckon you'd know – the Voldemort part of you

that existed elsewhen – what Da said when I let slip

the age you were in the book, what with

Scabbers-the-fink living yet with us.

"Seventeen," you wrote most politely, your

letters smiling benevolently and with no shortage

of charisma.  "I do hope you won't mind that, dear

Ginny.  I should like to think you and I might 

dare be friends, no matter a trivial age.  You do

sound like such a mature first year, rather

more of a woman than a girl."

God, I wanted to believe that so much,

wanted to feel I was older, wiser, and worthy

of Harry's love.  Why, in retrospect, is

everything painted in grey shades of irony?

"Seventeen?" sputtered Da with a great deal of

horror.  He repeated it again, disgust and

offended paternal amazement touching it all, continuing,

"He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named or not, you aren't

to be speaking with boys that much older than you

if they aren't a Weasley!"

I wanted to write that to you, giggling at

Da's overprotective thoughts that seemed to miss the

bigger picture if but for a moment, 

but was struck with a revulsion for myself.  Had I

already forgotten you with your basilisk eyes

and the reptile itself, forgetting how you teased me

and spoke in a soft, comforting tone as

you readied me to die?

I became fearful of the night; the day is my 

safety, my comfort, my centre of gravity, and the

night is yours.  I wrote with you at night, with night you

sought to use my blood as bait and key, and at night

I feel you growing again, preparing to do

heaven knows what.

God grant me grace 

when night falls.

Ginny.

-

-

With thanks to She's a Star (twice!), raiining, and woww this is good (^^).  Thanks muchly!


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